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"We act as though comfort and luxury are the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
2007 BMW R1200 GSA, 2009 DL1000, 2005 DR65030:Unemployed and Homeless (2 months and 10,000 miles)The Lost Texan, Wanders East

The entire bundle
You can get the entire Nik Collection from Google for $126.65 for a very limited time (until April 2, 2013). Use the code “northlight” at checkout. I use the Silver Efex Pro 2 and Viveza 2 products all the time and paid considerably more for the entire collection!

I prefer more "natural" HDR shots... I don't go for the "cartoon-y" look myself

(I miss this bike)

question. if it's not cartoon-y how do you tell if it's HDR? seriously. and is there a differences between pics shot in HDR and pics that were post processed to look HDR? and i understand that HDR is a melding of three shots at slightly different exposure settings. is that what ppl do when processing? copy one pic a few times, adjust the exposure/contrast, and then merge them into one pic again?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range - the idea of which is to expand the dynamic range beyond the capabilities of your camera so that you get more data at each end of the range (because our human eye can see such a larger range than a camera sensor).

Because so many people "over process" HDR... the "overpopped" style has become known as "HDR"... but in reality most "HDR" photos these days are just tone mappings made to look HDR like; perhaps "HDR style" photography would be more apropos.

For example.. in the photo below I used HDR techniques (I took 3 photos with an under-exposed and an over-exposed) to bring out the details in the church - I was shooting into the sun and my camera was incapable of showing the details of the near side of the church (which were in full shade). If I were to adjust the exposure so that I could see the details in the face of the church, then the mountain in the background was completely washed out. By merging the data from the over exposed and the under exposed image I was able to keep the detail in the church face and the mountain (which the human eye is capable of seeing when standing there; but a camera's sensor is not capable of capturing)